


Five Dreams and One Reality

by Ninj



Series: The Force of Intention [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Force Bond, One sided relationship, assassination attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninj/pseuds/Ninj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren and Rey have created a force bond. Now, they share dreams through it, both of them hoping for their own reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Dreams and One Reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tristesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/gifts).



> I would like to thank my beta [Nilozot](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nilozot/pseuds/Nilozot) who corrected many a typo, and offered some really good advice. Thank you!
> 
> Recip, I loved some of your prompts and I hope you enjoy the direction I went with this.

The first time, Rey thinks it’s a normal dream. Once again she’s on Starkiller Base, standing in the snowy forest. She thinks she’s going to dream about trying to save Finn. She’s failed to save him 25 times now and when she wakes to soothing Wookie rumbles and droid beeps she’s reminded that none of those 25 times happened. However this time, instead of watching Finn fall at Kylo Ren’s hand, Rey hears the thrum of a lightsaber activating and looks up to see Finn facing her with a look of terror on his face. 

Rey looks down and realizes she’s holding the lightsaber; it’s bright red. Finn wields the bright blue lightsaber that symbolizes so many things she can't articulate, and charges at her. Without meaning to she raises the red blade to defend herself. She doesn’t want to hurt him.

“Why-” _are you doing this?_ Rey tries to ask Finn but finds herself unable to speak. Desperately she tries not to fight her friend. She’s at the point where she’s about to drop her lightsaber just to stop this, when another figure appears. Striking from the shadows behind Finn, Kylo Ren appears to fight beside her. 

“Do it!” Ren’s voice comes out distorted through his mask. “Kill him.”

In a series of blinding twists he disarms Finn and pins him against a tree. 

Rey feels her body moving the lightsaber still in her hands. She feels her arms drawing back, and she’s screaming in her head. In her head-- 

Rey sits bolt upright with a deep gasp for air. The roar of the ocean waves hitting the cliff tell her she’s not on Starkiller Base. She reaches out with the force like Master Skywalker has been teaching her. She finds what she’s searching for, a small flicker of being, and something she is not. It’s hours until dawn, but she feels unsettled. She runs.

***

The second time, Kylo Ren wonders why everything he does with Rey never goes as expected. Instead of finding themselves on Starkiller Base again, working together to take out that traitor stormtrooper, Kylo Ren finds himself standing on the burning sands of Jakku.

He’s young, he realizes, looking down and seeing his bare hands. Ren can feel the grit of sand in his eyes. Oh no. 

“Ben!” a young familiar female voice calls, and he feels small arms wrap around his legs. “Where’s Uncle? Why did we fly the Falcon here alone?”

He can feel her weight against his leg. Right where she had almost always been, hanging onto the side of him, following him. Trusting him. He looks down at the girl he was so close to once, and tries to form the words he had then, but he feels another presence and looks up.  


“You were my teacher.” A grown up version of the girl clinging to his legs, the Rey of now, stares back at him. Rey’s eyes are filled with fury, and sadness. She looks the same as she had on Starkiller and yet different. Ren realizes what has changed. Now she knows. He wants to defend himself, he wants to speak, but instead he feels the body at his legs being torn away. 

Kylo Ren wakes up in his room on the Finalizer. He reaches out through the force bond that they are both apparently manipulating now, and feels the reassuring presence of her life. The last act of Ben Solo had been to spare his cousin from the dark. He had been such a fool.

***

The third time, it’s a room Rey has never seen before. She’s looking out over an unfamiliar cityscape at sunrise. Poe and General Organa have told her about Coruscant. She’s attending a peace conference with them next week, but so far she’s never been to a planet like this.

An arm slings itself around her shoulders, and she doesn’t start. She thinks it’s Finn or Poe, and she leans her head easily against the shoulder. But it’s too high, and dark hair brushes her face, even as lips touch the crown of her head. 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Kylo Ren’s undistorted voice is low, personal, and filled with affection. “Peaceful?”

Rey is rigid in his arms, even as a part of her feels complete. She can’t move, but it appears this time she can speak.

“What is this?” Rey asks, as sunlight glints like fire off the building next to them.

“The future,” Ren promises her, stroking down her arm like he was trying to soothe a panicked beast. “You live too much in the past. This is what the First Order will bring. Peace.”

“How many lives will you ruin first?” Rey demands, shaking even she leans into the contact. “This is a lie.”

“We could make this happen.” Kylo Ren releases her and steps aside. “We’re stronger together, Rey. We’re the same.”

At this Rey feels sadness. He knows. They’re not the same. But perhaps, as so many fear, they’re complementary. 

“In this world would I find my friends? Would your uncle be alive? Your mother?” Rey turns to face him, struck by how relaxed he looks. 

Kylo Ren shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” Rey walks out and wakes up. She’s afraid of what they could do together.

***

The fourth time, Kylo Ren feels like he’s dying. His black robes are tight around him and drenched in sweat. He’s on his back on a bed but someone is next to him. He twists and finds himself tangled in the sheets with her. She’s wheezing next to him, drenched and fever hot.

“What’s happening?” Ren rasps; his voice sounds weak. 

“I’m dying.” Rey tries to shove him away feebly. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re dreaming,” Ren says, pulling her closer although her body feels sticky and hot. Her hair is matted to her head. “Why are we dreaming about being sick?”

“I’m dying.” Rey buries her face in his chest as she repeats her phrase from before. “Snoke sent an assassin.”

Ren goes cold. He pushes her back and pulls till her fever bright eyes meet his. “No.” He reaches out through the force trying to find her conscious mind. Trying to find the light that’s sometimes so overwhelming. It’s there, but it’s...wrong? “No.”

“Didn’t he tell you he was taking away your toy?” Rey must still be bitter about their last face-to-face meeting after the peace talks. They had fought again. “Aren’t you his most trusted disciple?” 

“No,” Ren repeats again, trying to burrow into that light, trying to make the dream change. “You’re too strong for this.”

“What’s one more dead Jedi to the great Kylo Ren?” Rey asks. She would probably sound harsh but thanks to the fever she sounds almost lyrical. “You’ve certainly killed enough of them.”

Ren starts tearing at the sheets. He will fix this. She’s his, Snoke can’t have her. He tears open her shirt without hesitation and lays his hands on her chest. Before, well, before he might have been interested in healing. He tries to sink into her again through the skin, tries to visualize the problem, but instead, he falls into darkness.

And wakes to it as well. Glass litters the floor where the light fixtures have burst. His breathing is labored, his sleeping pallet in disarray. The bond is nearly dark. He screams.

***

The fifth time, there are bars between them. And much to Ren’s disgust a force field.

“How are you doing this?” he asks, and tries to reach through to her. “Why are you always so difficult?” 

“I’m the difficult one?” Rey asks from her bunk. “How many troopers did you kill after the last dream?”

“Five wouldn’t have made a difference,” Ren mutters, still trying to figure out why he can’t manipulate his own dream. “Nothing could have stopped the resistance.”

“The force was with them,” Rey hums, sounding pleased. She’s still very pale, although she no longer burns with fever. “Are you captured?”

Ren looks up, somewhat startled. He thought that was why there were bars. “You don’t know?”

Rey gives Ren a reproachful look. The forcefield drops and the bars disappear. Ren wishes he could tell how recovered she is. The bond has been so dim. Instead, and much to his surprise, she allows him to sit next to her. They touch from shoulder to ankle, and it’s the calmest he’s felt since watching Luke Skywalker cut down his master before he fled.

“I don’t know,” Rey confirms. Instead of sitting in a cell they’re sitting in the sand on Jakku, leaning against the head of an AT-AT. “Why did you leave me here?” 

“I didn’t leave you on Jakku,” Ren objects. It depends on how you look at it, he insists to himself. So many people don’t see the finer distinctions in his past. Rey ought to know better. 

“Would you come see me if I were captured?” Ren wants to see her in person. Wants to feel their bond in person. 

“Do you know fairy tales?” Rey asks, changing the subject. 

“What use have you or I for fairy tales?” Ren is openly scornful. Nothing has given him the impression that Rey had time for trivialities in her life. 

“Have you ever wanted to wake up a princess?” Rey asks him, twisting so that now she’s facing him in profile. 

“You wake up all on your own,” Ren reminds her. “No matter what I want.”

“I never did,” Rey tells him, and then he wakes up.

***

The reality is that you never stop dreaming about what you want. So Kylo Ren never stops dreaming of Rey, but it’s not the same. It’s not her. In his dreams they are happy, it’s easy, there is no aftermath of a war to deal with, but it’s not real. It’s not real, and it’s not good enough.

The reality is that Rey never woke up after the assassination attempt. Instead she lays in a room not alive and not dead. She is waiting, and maybe luring. 

A few months later Kylo Ren successfully makes his way into her room in the new training temple. He’s sure Skywalker knows he’s here, but he’s been projecting nonviolence as hard as possible. Meaning, his intention reads that he’ll kill anyone who tries to stop him from finding her, and no one if they just let him be. 

When he sees Rey, Ren can’t tell if she’s glowing because she’s so pale, or if it’s with some kind of force energy. You would think if the force was that strong in her, she’d wake up. 

“Do you know how many people believe that true love’s kiss will wake up a sleeping princess?” Rey’s voice speaks from the bed, her lips move, but not the rest of her body.

“You’ve been faking being unconscious for months?” Ren is outraged. He had actually worried! His side may have lost and all, but he’s been looking for her for months. 

“No.” Rey’s voice is rough and unused. “I’m just confirming that fairytales aren’t real.” 

Ren doesn’t care to stop himself from hoisting her up by the shoulders and fitting her torso against his. She tries to squirm away, but it turns out laying around for months does not lend itself to physical strength. 

“How are you alive?” Ren had figured out what she’d been poisoned with. She’s the first survivor. 

“Force bond,” Rey answers, still trying to shove him away from her, now trying to use the force to aid her efforts. Ren savors the feeling of her in his actual arms. Much better than a dream. “You wouldn’t let me die.” 

“I wouldn’t let you leave me,” Ren corrects. Because the reality is that Kylo Ren is not Ben Solo, is not kind enough to spare his cousin from himself. She’s his, and he is hers, and they are two sides of one coin. The dark and the light. 

Which is why reality with Rey is a constant battle of love and hate. They fight for each other, with each other. Kylo Ren is not a Sith Lord, but he is not a good person. He keeps Rey alive out of pure selfishness. He makes her suffer through life with poison coursing through her veins. 

Rey is not the savior the galaxy, but she is saving the galaxy from Kylo Ren’s attention. He’s singularly focused on who he can’t have. And she won’t let him have her. Not all of her. She has friends and she has family, and she is of the light. Reality is nothing like their dreams.


End file.
